Shiki-Colors mixes the elegance of a dark theme with the usability of a light theme, resulting in a hybrid theme. Shiki is designed to be fast and stable.

There is a Clearlooks version for out-of-the-box compatibility with most distros and a Murrine version for eyecandy and speed.

There are 7 color variations (Orange, Blue, Green, Purple, Red, Chocolate, Pink). A matching set of Icons, Wallpapers and GDM themes can also be downloaded separately from gnome-look or at the gnome-colors project page.

You can edit the theme's source (the gtkrc files) for further customization, which is all too easy due to the included instructions.

Must read or clowns will eat you:
* The Murrine version will only work with Murrine 0.90.3 or newer. Yes, you will need to upgrade unless you're using Ubuntu Jaunty.

* The borders are very thin, and titlebars/menubars are unified because of "LOL, ELEGANCE". If you have any difficulty resizing windows, try the included alternate metacity with thicker borders.

* In Ubuntu, for themes (installed through appearance preferences) to be able to theme applications in admin mode, you must type in a terminal:sudo ln -s ~/.themes /root && sudo ln -s ~/.icons /root

* In Ubuntu, you can use the official PPA repository for easy installation and upgrades. For Ubuntu Karmic Koala, you can simply run apt-get install shiki-colors to install from Ubuntu's universe repositories. The packages are also available in Debian Sid.

* To fix minor Firefox 3 bugs in Shiki-Colors, install the Stylish add-on and go here (or install the included userChrome.css file following the instructions in README):http://userstyles.org/styles/10822

* Consider donating a small amount to the GNOME-Colors project if you wish to support it, or to show your appreciation. You can do so by clicking on the "donate" button next to the download section. Last changelog:

4.4 (2009-07-14)
* Add new Pink (Illustrious) color variation.
* Add support for gdm-user-switch applet in Karmic.
* Fix panel matching in Dust-Murrine variant.
* Remove spaces in metacity names for easier RPM packaging. You might have to
remove the old metacity folders or run make uninstall from a previous version.

663 comments

Comments

The Clearlooks version Shiki-Colors doesn't appear to be compatible with Clearlooks 0.6.2, which to the best of my knowledge is the most recent version? I'm quite gutted about this because I actually prefer the Clearlooks version to Murrine (prefer matte widgets to glassy)! I can live with the Murrine version for now but any chance of the Clearlooks version being updated? Or have I actually got the wrong version of the Clearlooks engine? Thank you!

Thank you for your prompt and helpful reply! I wanted the most updated version of Clearlooks and wasn't sure which it was so I went with the version on Gnome-look. When I uninstalled that and reinstalled the gtk2-engines from the repos all was fine.

After using the Murrine version for a while I definitely see what you mean. I think my perception of it was skewed by the glassy nature of the vast majority of Murrine themes.

I think it's possible that you do have the wrong version of Clearlooks installed.

What distro are you using? In order for the clearlooks version to work for you, you need the equivalent of Ubuntu Hardy/GNOME 2.22 or higher.

Also, you shouldn't need to install Clearlooks yourself, as clearlooks is a part of the "gtk2-engines" package, which is included by default in most GNOME distributions. The latest version of this package is 2.18.1, and Shiki works perfectly with it.

Okay. If you find the clearlooks gradients too evident, the murrine ones are more subtle. I'm using the murrine version now. I'm loving it too. I kinda prefer clearlooks' rubbery gradient feel but the murrine style also fits Shiki. The reason why I chose murrine over clearlooks (for now) is its being light. Is it really lighter?

Murrine is lighter than Clearlooks, although this might only be evident in older machines... There was a little bit of a difference in my old Pentium 4 box's gtkperf scores, but in my new Phenom box, it's essentially the same.

The most important factor in performance is roundness... Shiki has a 2 radius roundness for most parts and 0 roundness for some areas, so it's quicker than most themes who use 3 or higher for everything. However, you can also change all roundness to 0 and have a slightly faster squared theme.

About the toolbars - I'm not sure if subtler gradients might help.. there usually is a separator between toolbars, and the gradients reset themselves. I would apply gradients if there was a way to make all toolbars unified like they currently are, but with added gradients.

If you didn't know already perfectska04 a GNOME developer has used your theme (Shiki-Wise) to show off a new experimental program being developed called Zeitgeist that finds all your files and folders and tags them.

Look at the demonstration video linked in this article: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist

It's just as cyberpunk said. If you want RGBA, it should be as easy as changing the line that says "RGBA = FALSE" into "RGBA = TRUE", but it doesn't really do much since that depends on the applications themselves to support it and not any one theme.

4.4 (2009-07-14)
* Add new Pink (Illustrious) color variation.
* Add support for gdm-user-switch applet in Karmic.
* Fix panel matching in Dust-Murrine variant.
* Remove spaces in metacity names for easier RPM packaging. You might have to
remove the old metacity folders or run make uninstall from a previous version.